


Crime scene

by AudreyHorneFeelsDreamy



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: After Series 3, Domlene, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 23:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14579664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AudreyHorneFeelsDreamy/pseuds/AudreyHorneFeelsDreamy
Summary: Darlene started to message Dom a few days after the barn.She ignored them, hit delete on every one.





	Crime scene

 

Dom wasn’t a hateful person.

In fact, she prided herself on her capacity to forgive, to learn, to move on, an attitude that had served her well during her time with the bureau when allies needed to be forged and a line had to be walked between being a team player and top-level material, and she’d worked hard to be that person.

 

But Darlene had left her feeling like she didn’t even know who she was anymore.

 

She’d gone back to work, someone had corrupted the surveillance tapes.

Santiago was officially on a sabbatical to care for his mother in her final days, and Dom was quietly alarmed at how everyone just accepted all this, and she realized none of them cared.

 

No one cared enough about Santiago personally to ask why he’d just gone.

No one cared about anything that wasn’t on their plate, and maybe all this had taken the blinkers off, and she was finally realizing that not everyone was here to be the good guy, even if they started that way, there were more people here quietly minding their own business who could easily turncoat for someone like Whiterose.

 

But then there was Darlene.

 

For just a fleeting moment, she’d thought they connected, that they had something.

Professional though she was, Dom had noticed her looks when they first began their investigation into 5/9, just in passing.

She had a thing for severe looking girls with dark hair, but… She had a job to do, and maybe when they finally had her in the interrogation room, she’d noticed her a little more, but she was working, and Darlene? She was the bad guy, or at least, heavily involved with the bad guys.

Only… When she became a CHS, the boundaries between good guys and bad guys wasn’t so clear, and she watched her putter around the apartment from upstairs. Watched her pour her coffee and finish her puzzle and curl her legs under her to watch TV in the evening, then she knew she was crossing a line, that she was violating Darlene’s privacy, not by watching her, but by watching her for her own gain.

 

She’d lost her boyfriend, would probably lose her brother one way or another, no wonder she was hostile, which was why Dom liked to watch her like this, when she wasn’t putting up a front for anyone.

 

She stopped watching when she realized that.

It didn’t feel right.

* * *

 

Doms phone buzzed, and glancing down she saw the number for her department flash up, so answered it.

 

“DiPierro…”

 

“At last! She lives!”

 

Her stomach dropped when she heard Darlene's voice.

 

“How did you get this number?... wait... How are you calling from THAT number?”

 

“Seriously? Like it’s hard to have any number I want on your phone to flash up when I call? I’m a big scary super hacker… remember?”

Her tone was one of lazy condescension.

She was masking.

 

“I have nothing to say to you. Don’t call me again.”

 

“Dom…”

Darlene started, but Dom ended the call and turned her ringer off.

 

If work called they’d leave a message she could pick up later.

* * *

 

  


She used to think she slept badly, but that was before all this… Now she didn’t sleep at all.

 

She spent the hours she was meant to be sleeping simply staring at one screen or another. Her phone, her tablet, her laptop, her tv… it didn’t matter which one.

 

Sometimes she thought about the night Darlene had come back to her place.

 

Looking back it was easy to see how she’d been manipulated, how clever Darlene had been, and all it took was for Dom to open up just a touch, to just let in the idea that someone could care after all, it was that simple.

Darlene saw a chink in her armor and went for it.

But although the execution had been clumsy, the way Darlene had kind of lunged in for that first kiss… and then the second... She had thought, even now, that later it had changed, that maybe Darlene had gone into this with the sole intention of getting into Sentinel, but once they started kissing once they made it back to bed… She hadn’t imagined that… Had she?  

It hadn’t felt perfunctory, it had felt...    

 

What the fuck did she know...

Just let it go.

* * *

 

 

“Please… I just wanna talk…”

 

Dom listened to the third voicemail Darlene had left, this time on her brothers number.

 

“I wanna tell you I’m sorry… For everything. Shit… I’m no good at this… I fucked up, ok? I fucked everything up and I should never have got you involved… I was cornered… By Elliot… Tyrell… Dark army… I saw you as a way to finish a job, to turn back time, and I was so fucked up I never even stopped to think about you… And you… You _idiot_... You cared… and you got yourself mixed up in all this shit and it’s all my fault…”

 

Her voice hitched softly at the end, and Dom found herself biting down hard on her lip.

 

She could have walked away.

 

Once they brought her in and Santiago took her off the case… She could have just left it at that and she would have been none the wiser about any of this, but there was that niggle in the base of her brain, and while she tried to tell herself that it was because she was chasing the scent, that she was never going to be satisfied with the way the case had wrapped up, deeper down she knew she went after Santiago to make sure Darlene was ok.    

 

“Just… I dunno… call me… message me… Just let me say I’m sorry… Then I’ll leave you alone.”

 

The voice mail ended, and Dom stood in the middle of her room with the phone against her ear, listening to silence.

 

* * *

 

What was she thinking?

Honestly, she wasn’t sure, but she messaged Darlene and told her to come over, that she could say her thing and then leave.

But who was she kidding….

She could have just called her, let her say her sorries then hang up, she didn’t need her to come here to do it.

…. And why did she feel the need to straighten up, to check her hair.

“Alexa play classical mix…”

Strings swelled throughout the apartment and she decided she only wanted Darlene to come see how good she looked, how FINE she was about everything, how she had hardly thought about her at all, but longer she looked at her reflection the easier it was to see the truth, and she was trying too hard, anyone could see that, even if they weren’t a con artist.

“Alexa stop…”

Silence fell again, and she sighed softly.

* * *

 

She opened the door to Darlene, and the first thing she noticed was how small she looked.

dom was a little taller than her, but had never realized because she’d always seemed bigger than she really was, like her personality took up significantly more space than her actual physical body, only now, she looked shrunken, she looked like she was trying to curl in on herself.

She looked like Elliot.

 

“Wow… I feel like I’m returning to the scene of the crime… isn’t that what all dumb criminals do?”

She was trying to put on an indifferent tone, but it wasn’t working.

 

Dom stepped back to let her come in, closing the door behind her.

“Do you want a drink?”

 

Darlene shrugged, letting the movement hep her slip her backpack off her shoulders so she could take it off.

“Sure.”

 

“Beer?… It’s lite though…

 

“Lites fine…”

 

Dom took two beers from the fridge and popped the caps before handing Darlene one, but keeping her distance still.

 

“Cheers…” Darlene said flatly, tipping her head back to take four long swallows.

 

“You wanted to apologize…”

 

“Yeah… I did…”

 

Dom saw she couldn’t quite meet her eye as she spoke, that her fingers fiddled with the neck of the slim bottle, her thumbnail scraping absently across the label.

 

“I was really shitty to you… I was fixated on fixing shit, and keeping Elliot safe, and I used you… I’m sorry…”

She glanced over to catch Doms eye.

“If I hadn’t been such a bitch you might never have ended up in this mess.”

 

Dom nodded.

“You’ve ruined my life.” She said simply, shaking her head a little at the thought.           

“Dark army owns me...I would have died back there… I was ready to die, and what they did was so much worse… they made me my family's executioner... One slip and it’ll be my hand letting go of the rope, and I’ll have to stand back and watch the guillotine fall… Me.”

 

“They own my ass too!”

 

“You chose this Darlene! You chose to risk everything, I didn’t!”

 

“Bullshit…” Darlene snorted softly, taking another long pull on her beer.

“The minute you decided you wanted to be Clarice Starling you made that choice as well… The minute you walked all starry-eyed into baby FBI school, you made a _choice_ … You knew life was bigger than what it seems, that it’s not as simple as catching the drug dealer or the drug lord, or the damn kingpin…. There’s always someone higher up the food chain… and you chose to chase her…”

 

Dom pressed her lips together as Darlene spoke, and she hated that it was the truth.

She wondered how many agents turned blind eyes here and there?

More than she’d realized, or maybe just more than she’d hoped.

 

“Anyway… Guess we’re coworkers now..” Darlene half smiled, and Dom laughed, knowing she sounded just slightly manic, so she stopped.  

She saw Darlene's smile fade and watched as she took a shuddery breath in.

 

“I’m really fucking scared…” She whispered, then Dom saw it.

She saw the pure fear behind Darlenes posturing, her eyes wide, mouth soft, she looked more like a small, terrified child than the right-hand woman of one of the biggest criminals in known history.

 

“Me too…” She admitted, then watched in horror as Darlene burst into tears.

“Oh… hey… no… Don’t cry…”

She put down her beer and took Darlenes from her as well, putting hesitant hands on her arms and guiding her to the couch, sitting with her.

“It’s gonna be ok…”

 

“No it’s not! How could you possibly know that?” She rasped, trying to hold back her sobs.

“No one walks away from this… We don’t fix this… You don’t expose everyone and get to be a hero… We all… Die…”

 

Dom hugged her.

She wasn’t a huggy person, it didn’t come naturally to her, but maybe because they’d already been as intimate a possible it didn’t feel as awkward as it might.

What surprised her was when Darlene hugged her back, and she realized just how touch starved she was, how long she could go without even touching another human being, and to have someone's arms go around her, to cling to her and encourage her to do the same…

 

“I was a bitch to use you like that.” Darlene sighed stuffily, sniffling a little as she swallowed the rest of her tears.

“I wish I hadn’t met you that way… That we could have just met in a bar or something…”

 

Dom curled her fingers into the back of darlene's shirt as she spoke.

 

“Slates can be wiped clean.”

 

She felt Darlene hold her breath, then slowly pull back, and Dom felt the way her cheek slid against hers, how her nose bumped softly against her own.

 

This time, when they kissed, it wasn’t with the clumsy bump of mouths that Darlene had instigated, it was a smooth movement where their lips seemed to meet naturally, where they pressed into it softly, one long press and then a gentle parting of lips as they started to kiss properly.

She tasted like beer, and the deep, salty, sorrowful sea.

 

The voice that told her this was a bad idea was pushed aside by the one that said it was the only good idea.

They might be dead tomorrow.

They might be dead in a week, or a year, but right now, they were alive, and that was the only thing that mattered.

They were alive, and scared, and only had each other.


End file.
